Taking “Light it, Shoot it, Retouch It” Out For a Spin
I mentioned earlier this week that back on Monday we invited some NAPP members to come to our headquarters (just outside Tampa, Florida), and be a part of a full dress rehearsal/dry run for my upcoming “Light It, Shoot it, Retouch It Live!” nationwide tour (inspired by my series of classes with the same name on Kelby Training Online). Well, I got some images from Brad and I thought I’d share them here with you guys on the blog.
The idea of this day was to get in front of a live audience, do the entire seminar from start to finish (with all the lighting set-ups, shooting, and then retouching, editing, and finishing of the photos in Photoshop), and then get live, on the spot feedback from the attendees about anything they wanted added, addressed in more detail, and generally anything I could do to make the day more valuable to them. Well, I’m happy to say, the experiment worked even better than I had hoped (and the tour will be that much better because of it).
OK, that’s me goofing off above while Brad was taking production shots (Nothing is more handsome than having a wire hanging off your face, eh?) Anyway, the audience was absolutely fantastic—I couldn’t have asked for a better group. They were totally into it, and a HUGE help with lots of insights, great questions, and requests that I was able to add directly to the detailed seminar workbook before it goes to press. By the way; you’d think I would have retouched that funky dent in my hair on the top left side, but after seeing this shot, I actually took it a step further and went and got my hair cut today. :)
Here I am doing bunny ears. It was that kind of day. We had three different professional models working with us during the day (two women and a man), and we went through different lighting set-ups for different looks, then we did the full portrait retouches, and ended each segment with finishing off the photos, and adding portrait effects and some fun Photoshop tricks (including a whole segment on compositing).
I really want this tour to be something that will help a lot of people by showing the complete process from empty room to finished image, and I owe a debt of thanks to everyone who came that day to help make the tour the best it can be. Thanks for all your feedback, great input, and for being such a great crowd to present to. You guys rocked it! :-)
This was, hands down, one of the most fun seminars I’ve ever taught, because we covered so much ground in so little time, and everything happened in real time. I’ll have cities and dates coming next week (the tour kicks off in just a few weeks), so stay tuned.